Blake rolled over from his fetal position and lay on his back with his fingers intertwined behind his head. His thick, black hair lay askew and coiled in tendrils about his slightly bearded face. He crossed his legs at the calf and breathed in deep, allowing him to savor the sweet scent of his girlfriend’s perfume. Chanel. Grace liked to give their pillows a light spray in the evening before they’d go to bed, to cover any other naughty odors, since laundry was only once a week. Blake had felt it was an expensive way to waste a perfectly good perfume, but after doing it for several months in spite of his constant nagging, he had come to enjoy the scent and resorted to buying her the perfume for every special occasion.He yawned as he stretched his arms, separating his fingers and bending them just enough to allow them to crack. His head sunk deep into the feathers of his pillow. His eyes watered as he yawned, so he wiped them with the backs of his hands and blinked a few times to clear his murky vision.“Good morning, honey,” he whispered, to where Grace usually slept. The mass of pillows and blankets before him didn’t stir, nor did it make a sound. Blake smiled. She probably didn’t get to bed until late last night.Feeling cuddly and in the mood, he draped his right arm over the mass of blankets and pressed slightly against it.“Grace,” he whispered sweetly, “time to get up, honey.”He bucked his hip and nudged her lightly with his knee, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t even moan, or snore, or anything. Her form simply lay there, motionless. He bumped her again, but still no response.“Well, fine, if you’re going to be stubborn, then forget it,” he muttered turning his back to her, and pulled the blanket around him and up over his face.He lay there with pursed lips and narrowed eyes, feeling slighted. It wasn’t like her to be so callous and rude. Normally she’d swat him, or at least acknowledge him, even if she were mad at him. And she had no reason to be mad at him … or did she?He closed his eyes and tried to remember what had happened before they went to bed, but his memory was too fuzzy. He could recall them having gone downtown to her favorite restaurantto celebrate her twenty-fourth birthday. He remembered he had given her a card, right—no, it was a poem and her bottle of Chanel, just as he had promised. He turned and lay on his back once again, while rubbing his temples trying to remember what had happened the night before. I gave her the poem and she read it, and I remember her giving me a kiss. And she knew the box was her perfume.He repeated to himself everything he could recall, but for some strange reason he still couldn’t remember them leaving the restaurant or even going to bed. Did we drink that much wine?There’s no way!He certainly wasn’t a wine drinker, and he knew he only imbibed a little when he wished her a happy birthday but it wasn’t more than three or four sips of the stuff.He rubbed his face with both of his hands, feeling the coarse hairs of his beard against his palms. Why can’t I remember?“Grace?”Silence.“Grace?” he said, a little louder.Still more silence.He groaned and finally decided, since he couldn’t remember, he must have done something exceptionally bad to get this kind of silent treatment. In the five years they’ve dated, she’d never treated him like this before. This was all new territory.He pushed the blankets away from him and threw his legs over the edge of the bed, feeling for his slippers. Upon finding them, he stuffed his feet into them and scuffed over towards the bedroom door. He briefly paused, as he passed her bureau, to stare at a silver-framed picture of the two of them smiling. His arms had been wrapped around her petite waist, and her head lay snuggled against his chest. Her flowing, honey-blonde hair slightly covered her beaming face. It had been taken while they were in Barbados, a year earlier, to celebrate their fourth anniversary. It had been his first trip there; her seventh. He puckered his face and straightened the frame, as it was angled partially from view. He reached for the door handle and was about to give it a twist, before he decided to look back to where Grace lay beneath all of the blankets. “I’m going to get the coffee started, ok?” he stated, hoping she’d respond. When she didn’t, he heaved a sigh and reluctantly opened their bedroom door. As he walked down the narrow hallway, passing years of framed memories, he shielded his eyes from the sunlight that filtered in from the living room’s sliding glass door.Just outside of the kitchen, he tripped over the phone cord that was not in its usual place. He looked down squinting, trying to figure out why it appeared to have been cut. He picked it up and looked at the frayed end, inspecting it closely.“That’s odd,” he murmured.He bent down to look at the phone jack and noticed the other side of the plug was still attached, also frayed at the end. He lined the two wires together and realized they hadn’t been cut, rather, someone had ripped the cord with full strength.He looked around their apartment; his eyes wide open in shock. Every single one of their possessions had been smashed, sliced or strewn all over the place. Their brand new leather furniture had been cut, the stuffing spilled out like guts splattered after a motorcycle accident. Pictures were ripped and torn, and scattered in pieces on the floor like confetti. Hollowed, glassless frames lay bent as though the Hulk had come through and smashed them. Jagged pieces of glass were splayed along the floor like a glittering jig-saw puzzle.“What in the world—” Without a second glance, he rushed back into his bedroom calling out for Grace.“Grace! Grace, wake up! Something’s happened to our apartment!”He reached the bedroom, walked over to the mass of pillows and blankets on her side of the bed, and ripped off the blankets.“Grace?” He looked down at the bed and realized she wasn’t there at all. That form on the bed that he thought was Grace was nothing more than a body pillow.Panic made his pulse quicken. His blood raced through his veins, thundering in his ears. He clutched his chest, feeling his heart pound against his rib cage. “Grace?” he whispered.Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw some movement in the closet. He yanked open the double doors, scanning every inch of the hollowed rectangular block, but there was nothing there. His eyes had been playing tricks on him.He ran out to the hall again and stopped at the bathroom door, which stood closed with not even a shadow of light shining underneath. He knocked, wistfully thinking maybe she had taken a bath and was listening to her iPod.When she didn’t respond, he knocked again, this time even harder. The sound of the hollowed door being pounded echoed along the hall.He leaned into the door and pressed his ear against it, hoping he’d hear something … anything. “Grace? Are you in there?”When she didn’t respond, he reached for the door handle and gave it a quick jerk, but the handle wouldn’t budge. It was locked.Breathing in and trying not to think the worst, he pounded his fist on the door and cried out for Grace to answer him. “Grace, if you’re in there, I’m only going to say this one more time before I kick this door in! Open the damn door—” he paused and waited.“Please, Grace, please answer the door.” he pleaded, resting his head on the frame. His black curls covered his face.Again, she didn’t respond.Feeling something was definitely out of place, something was definitely wrong, he decided to step back and kick the door in. Shouldn’t I call the police? He thought before finally deciding to kick the door in. What if something’s really wrong and I’m too late.The chilling thought of seeing Grace faced down in the tub sent a tremor of guilt and pain through him. His forehead creased with worry and exasperation. He had to get that door open. With one fell swoop, he lifted his right leg and slammed his slipper-covered foot into the hollowed bathroom door. But it didn’t budge; didn’t even put a crease in it. He tried again. And again. And again. But still, the door stood as it did before.He raced back into his bedroom and grabbed his steel toe work boots. He tossed his slippers aside and jammed his feet into them.Nearly tripping over the laces, he stomped back to the bathroom door and kicked.Crr-aaaaa-ck. The frame around the door started to buckle, and the door began to crumble from the weight of the heavy blows.He kicked harder, sweat dripping from his brow.“I’m coming, Gracey, I’m coming!” he cried out. After nearly two minutes of kicking full strength, the bathroom door fell completely from its hinges and snapped open, flinging against the wall with a hard smaaaack. The light was off in the bathroom the shower curtain appeared wrapped around the tub, hiding any occupants from view. He flicked on the light, ignoring the loud whirring from the vent, and stepped forward on the white tiled floor toward the bathtub. A drip-drip-drip sound came from the sink faucet as Blake breathed in and out carefully, afraid of what he might see behind that shower curtain.“Grace?”Squeezing his eyes shut, and once again fearing the worst, he reached forward to grasp the plastic shower curtain. He breathed in sharply and gave it a quick tug, ripping it from its plastic clasps.Afraid to open his eyes, he leaned toward the tub and partially opened his left eye, wincing as he did so.“What the--?” His jaw dropped and his eyes shot open as he stared upon the empty white, porcelain tub. Thank God! He breathed a short sigh of relief. She’s not in the bathroom, she’s not in the bedroom and definitely not in the living room … where is she?“Grace?” he called out again, running for the kitchen.He raced to the television and stared down at the cable box which blinked the time, 8:30 a.m. It was only Sunday, but just in case he had slept the whole day he retreated back into their bedroom and pulled his cell phone out from his rumpled pant suit pocket.Sunday, 8:31 am, it read. He flipped through the phone’s text messages hoping to see if he had missed one from her, but there weren’t any unread messages. He pressed the menu button and checked his call log, but there weren’t any new calls either.He pressed the hot key ‘3’ for Grace’s cell and held the phone to his ear, waiting for it to ring.Hey! Grace’s voice stated, without ringing; You’ve reached Grace Charpentier, but my phone’s probably off, so do what you need to do and I’ll get back to you! Beeeeeep.“Hey, Gracey, it’s – uh, Blake. I’m kind of freaking out here ‘cause you’re not home and I’m trying to figure out where you are … so –uh, when you get this message, call me, ‘k!”He jammed his thumb on the END button and debated calling the police to not only report a break-in, but a kidnapping as well. What if she’s hurt? What if she needs me? The most gruesome of thoughts flashed through his mind. Grace tied up and gagged; her mascara dipping from her eyes in jagged streaks, her nose running, and honey-colored hair tousled. Cement shoes, he thought. Her, floating at the bottom of the Charles River; her crystal blue eyes bulging from their eye sockets, her hair standing as it floats with the current, and her mouth covered in duct tape.“No!” he growled, desperately trying to wipe those images from his mind. “She went for a drive … or, or … she took a walk!”He picked up one of the dining room chairs and sat, staring at his phone in his hands. He stared hard, almost as if he were willing it to ring. Ring, damn it, ring!But it wouldn’t.“That’s it! I’m calling the police!” With his mind made up, he pressed his thumb down on the 9 button, then scanned for the 1, and mashed down on it twice. He looked up at the mess before him, feeling absolutely hopeless, and slid his thumb over the green CALL button. But before he could apply any weight to it, his phone began to light up and vibrate in his hand. A new text message.He looked at who it was from and groaned upon seeing it wasn’t from Grace; it was from his younger brother, Mitch.He pressed the OK button, opening the text message and read what it said:Hey dude, sry bout Grace. Just got ur vm, will call u l8r, Mitch.Blake repeated the text aloud and sat with his back against the chair. “What the heck is that supposed to mean? Sorry about Grace?”Then as if he had been shot in the head, the events that had taken place the night before played vividly in front of his eyes. He had given Grace the poem and the bottle of perfume, but she hadn’t kissed him. No … instead she looked so sad, and he could detect that something was wrong, but she wasn’t being forthcoming. He had asked her if she was ok and she looked away. He watched her with a sullen expression as she wiped tears that trickled from her eyes, smudging her mascara and creating black divaricate streaks down her crimson cheeks. It wasn’t going to be good news; he could feel it in the pit of his stomach. He had tried to swallow back the sickening taste that rose to his mouth, and got on his knees in front of her.She looked down, her hair shielding her face, and Blake could tell she was trembling. “Was it something I did?” he asked gently.She shook her head, thus shaking her mane of hair about her face.“Was it something I said?” he asked, trying to recollect what it could have been.She shook her head again.He placed his clenched hands on her lap and looked up at her with pleading eyes, “Then tell me what’s wrong.”She looked up at him, her face strewn with tears, and bit her lip. “I can’t keep doing this?” she finally said between hiccups.Blake shook his head, “Can’t keep doing what? I don’t understand.”She took a deep breath and finally spilled everything she had been keeping bottled up inside for nearly a year, “I cheated!” she blurted, “I cheated with—with, someone. I slept with him in our house.”Blake’s jaw dropped at this sudden news, and stared at Grace as she continued telling him what had happened.“He—he was delivering pizza and,” she paused to look up at Blake as she spoke. “And you weren’t home. You were working late, as usual, and I—I was so lonely.”Blake stared at her like a deer in headlights, unable to speak. His throat was tight and his mind in a numbing shock.“He was so cute and so sweet; I only invited him in so that I could get my purse from the bedroom. I-I-It wasn’t supposed to happen.” She buried her face in her hands as she spoke, but continued talking.Blake looked around at the other patrons of the restaurant. He could feel their eyes burning in the back of his skull.“One thing lead to another and the next minute I know, we were on the couch.”By now she was bawling and hiccupping, making her words indecipherable. It all made sense to Blake now; all the nights he’d come home from work and had seen the pizza boxes stuffed in the trash barrel. This explained her constant desire for pizza.Blake shook his head and, without a word of protest from her, he walked out of the restaurant. It was just too much to grasp, too much to handle in such a short period. An intimate birthday dinner wasn’t supposed to turn into a confessional.That’s when he decided to let loose. He walked to the bar across from the restaurantand drank himself stupid. He must have gotten so trashed and heated that when he returned to his apartment, he was the one that destroyed everything. He was the one that took their Omaha Steak knives and stabbed the leather couches like a stuck pig. He was the one that flung all their pictures against the walls, smashing them and ripping them to shreds. It wasn’t some kidnapper or robber that caused the destruction to their apartment … it was him.And as for what happened to Grace, after Blake left her in the restaurant, well … let’s just say she won’t be thinking of buying pizza anymore.